Pakistani Defense Ministry Seeks Closure Of Top TV Station

April 23, 2014

Senior journalist for the Geo News television station Hamid Mir (left) watches as police officers show a bomb found under his car to Interior Minister Rehman Malik (center) in Islamabad in November 2012.

Pakistan's Defense Ministry has requested the country's top-rated television station be closed after the station alleged that Pakistan's intelligence agency was behind the attempted killing of a leading journalist.

The ministry wrote to the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority late on April 22 asking that it cancel the broadcasting license of Geo television.

The ministry complained about broadcasts on Geo that alleged that the Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) agency was connected to an assassination attempt on the station's popular talk-show host, Hamid Mir.

Mir was shot three times while in his car on April 19 and is currently recovering in a hospital.

The New York-based watchdog Committee to Protect Journalists posted a copy of the Defense Ministry's letter on its website that accuses Geo of launching "a vicious campaign, libelous and scandalous in nature."